Stormy Weather
by GottaLuvJoey
Summary: Enemies With Benefits 2. Tea tries her best, but for all her goodnatured attempts she can't help but dislike - okay, maybe even hate - Bakura, not that he feels any differently about her. Add a dash of hurricane, and stir well. YB x TG R&R please!
1. Prologue

_Here we have number two of the Enemies with Benefits 'series' thing... It was going to be a oneshot, but I found that it was getting helluva long, so I'm posting this bit as a Prologue-style chapter rather than as part of the main story._

_Not much more to say, really, except: Enjoy!_

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**Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh!, or any of its characters, and I sure as heck ain't getting any profit from this except from the warm glow of reviews! I also don't own hurricanes. Dang.****Enemies with Benefits 2**

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_Stormy Weather Part 1: Prologue_

Joey glared at his book, and then groaned, dropping his head to the tabletop with a dull thud. The white-haired teen beside him smiled sympathetically, and looked across the table at Tristan, who pointed to Joey and quipped wryly, "I'm with stupid."

"Who you callin' stupid?" Joey's head lifted in a flash, his brown eyes flashing. "It's not like you can do any more of it, genius!"

"I never said I could," Tristan told him, taking on an air of injured innocence, trying to ignore Ryou's muffled giggling. "I was **agreeing** with you!"

Joey groaned and sighed, looking at Ryou with a defeated air. "I dunno, Ryou – how do you just _get_ this stuff so easily?" He ran his hands through his blonde hair in frustration, staring sightlessly down at the seemingly undoable Maths written before him in Ryou's painstakingly neat handwriting. Honestly, that kid was a teacher's dream come true: not only could he actually understand the work, but his handwriting was beautifully legible too.

"I don't –" Ryou began, but he was cut off by a loud crash, and the lights going out. Somewhere, a girl screamed in fright, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He heard Joey's chair scraping across the floor, heard his footsteps as he headed confidently towards the screamer, who was almost certainly Serenity, his sister. Well… mostly confidently, ignoring one or two muttered curses as shin met furniture.

After some moments passed in silence, Joey reappeared with the welcome glow of a candle in each hand. His friends hailed him as though he was a conquering hero or something, and he placed the candlesticks on the table before bowing solemnly. "Thank you, thank you. No autographs, please."

Behind him, Serenity giggled. "Oh, stop it, Joey!" she said, giving her brother an affectionate shove. Evidently, the mere presence of her brother was enough to calm her. He winked at her, and then turned back to his friends, a sudden grin appearing on his face. "I guess that's the end of Maths, then?"

A matching grin slid onto Tristan's face, and the brunette closed his book with a snap. "Hear hear!" A thought occurred to him, and he bit his lip for a moment. "Hey, Joey, can I use your phone? I should probably let my mother know I'm okay." He rolled his eyes at the mention of his sometimes overprotective mother, and got to his feet at his friend's nod, taking a candle and heading for the phone.

"We should carry on," Ryou said sensibly, moving the remaining candle closer to their books, so that it shed its light on their books. "We **do** have a test on Friday, you know."

Joey sighed, sitting down again and shaking his head slowly. "I do know, but I also know that if I don't understand this by now… I ain't never gonna."

"Double negative," Ryou pointed out with a smile, straightening the papers in front of him. "So you're going to!"

Joey made a face at him, and was about to come back with a snappy rejoinder – dependant, of course, on his ability to think of one in the next three seconds that wasn't stupid and that he could say in front of his little sister – when Tristan's voice echoed hollowly through the room. He had no idea why, but perhaps it was merely the effect of the sinking feeling in his gut on his hearing as his friend said, "The phone's dead, guys. There's like a huge storm out there!" The tall youth pointed to the curtained window for emphasis.

Ryou went pale, his usually tanned skin now seeming as pale as his hair, or close to. In a hushed voice that did nothing to hide the note of fear contained therein, he said, "I heard about this on the radio - but it was supposed to pass us right by!" His eyes were wide with panic.

"What, Ryou?" Serenity asked gently, clearly affected by the state her friend seemed to be in. "What is it?"

Ryou swallowed drily, and then said in a tone that sounded to his friends like the slamming of a coffin door, "A hurricane." As his friends exchanged glances, he twined his fingers together nervously, biting his lip. Suddenly, he gave a cry, and smacked his head. "Tea!"

"What about her?"

Ryou's brow wrinkled with honest worry. "She was supposed to come to me now for help with – oh, I hope she stayed home! I'd hate for her to be out in this because of me!"

"Tea's a smart girl," Tristan said reassuringly. "She wouldn't walk to you if it seemed like it was going to rain."

Ryou stared into empty air as another, worse thought entered his head. "What if," he said, slowly, as though dreading the reality that his saying the words would bring, "what if she went early?" His friends stared at him, non-comprehending. He got to his feet, trying desperately not to panic. "That means that she's home alone with Bakura."

There was a communal inward breath as the significance of that statement sunk in. The hurricane was _nothing_ compared to the thought of being alone in a dark house with Ryou's more than slightly psychotic dark half.

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_There it is... the next bit should be up soonish!_

_cheerio  
GLJ_


	2. Chapter 1

_Thank you to my dear reviewers! I'm glad you likee. _

_Anyway, this bleeding story is taking for**ever** to get finished satisfactarily, so I have decided and I'm probably going to regret this, but oh well... to post up the next 'bit' as a chapter in its own right. So, basically, this just went from a oneshot to a short fic thing. Heh._

_On the bright side, I've got my last exam on Thursday, so after that I'll have more time to sit & tweak the fic, and then - hurrah! - I'll actually finish something that isn't a oneshot. xD _

_Enjoy!_

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Disclaimer:

I do not own YGO or the characters thereof. I only own... er... that ball of fluff over there. And Ryou's tree. I'm quite attached to that, too.

I do not own YGO or the characters thereof. I only own... er... that ball of fluff over there. And Ryou's tree. I'm quite attached to that, too.

_Stormy Weather: Chapter One_

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"'Bye Mom!" Tea called cheerily as she stepped out of the door, pausing for a moment to breathe in the fresh air. She had been studying for some time now, and it was nice to be outside again. Bending to smell the pretty pink roses along the pathway, the brunette began her walk down to Ryou's house. Her mother had offered to drive her, but she had declined; she loved to walk, and when she did it alone it gave her space to think, to set her mind in order to the rhythm of her footsteps.

She hummed as she went, her long legs taking leisurely paces as she strolled along. Having checked the big kitchen clock before she left, she knew that she didn't need to worry about being late – early, maybe, but not late. The girl hated being late; to her, not being punctual was quite disrespectful, and showed a bad attitude. And if anyone had a good attitude about life, it was Miss. Tea Gardener.

Soon, sooner than she'd thought possible, she reached the white palisade fence that separated Ryou's house from the rest of the street. Pushing the gate open, she made her way up the garden path, lifting a tulip to her nose and touching the big, old tree that dominated most of the garden gently as she passed it. She loved flowers – she always jokingly blamed her surname when anyone asked about her passion for all things green and growing.

Lifting her hand, she rapped politely on the door. An irritably sullen voice from within yelled, "Go away, we're not buying!" Tea giggled quietly, wondering why Bakura seemed to mistake her for a door-to-door salesman every time she popped in to visit. It must have something to do with the way she knocked. She knocked again, more insistently this time, and called, "I'm not trying to sell you something, Bakura!"

She groaned when his only response was to swear at her, and then tell her to go away. "Just let me in, Bakura!" she called again, tapping a foot impatiently. "Come on! I'm here to see Ryou, anyway."

The door opened a crack, and Tea was greeted with a slice of extremely annoyed face. "He's out," the face said flatly, and the door began to close again.

With a speed and agility developed from having to go through this rigmarole more than once before, Tea jammed her foot into the door, stopping it from closing. "I'll wait," she said firmly, pushing at the door in an attempt to open it.

"Whatever." The door was released so quickly that she accidently forced it wide open with the strength of her pushing, making it bang on the wall and causing her to unbalance enough to fall over.

As she clambered, now becoming irritated, to her feet, she caught a glimpse of spiky white hair disappearing up the stairs. After closing the door gently and dusting herself off, she put her bag on the couch and went upstairs, her mouth forming a determined line. "Bakura!" she called upon reaching the landing, hands on hips. "Where are you?"

"I'm on a yacht in the Bahamas, what do **you** think?"

Tea rolled her eyes, sighing in annoyance. And her mood had been _so_ nice when she'd left home, too. "I'm not in the mood for sarcasm, Bakura!"

"Aw. I'm sympathetic. Now go away and wait for Ryou somewhere where I don't have to so much as smell you."

Tea huffed, but she knew that she wasn't going to get anywhere with him anytime soon. She clomped downstairs and seated herself on the couch, checking her watch. Hmm, that was unlike Ryou – he was late. Five minutes, but still. After a while, she picked up the remote and flicked on the television, beginning to flick through the awful afternoon television. Outside, the wind began to pick up, dark clouds gathering overhead – but Tea was oblivious in her seemingly futile search for something decent to watch.

"– please do not leave your homes at this time."

Tea blinked, her attention caught by the serious tone of the anchorman. She listened to him in silence for a few moments, her face slowly creasing first with worry, and then with fear. A hurricane – Hurricane Michelle, to be exact – was heading their way. She'd heard about it before, but it was supposed to have gone right around Domino City. Think again.

Leaving the television on, in case the anchorman said anything else important, Tea got to her feet and returned to the staircase. "Um, Bakura…?" she said uncertainly as she climbed, not really sure why she wanted to subject herself to the youth's acidic temper, but aware that at this point she just wanted to see another human face. Even if it wasn't a face she particularly _liked_.

"What. Do. You. Want?" Bakura's door slammed open, and his head poked out into the corridor, his mane of white hair wild and a scowl on his tanned face. "Can't a guy get some peace around here?" he asked the world at large, ignoring the fact that Tea was staring blankly at him, taking in his unruly appearance. Usually, when she saw him at school for example, he seemed to be quite well-dressed, and whatever messiness was about his person was the intentional, bad-boy-charm stuff. This was… fairly unexpected.

She cleared her throat. "Er… I just thought you might want to know… there's a hurricane coming. It's going to be a big one, at least according to the weatherman."

"That's niiiiiice." Bakura's head retreated, and his door slammed closed again. He seemed unable to move a door without making a noise.

Tea glared at the space where he'd been, and turned to go back downstairs, muttering, "Well, fine. That's what you get for being nice around –"

It was very sudden, but to Tea it appeared to happen in slow motion. There was a great creaking sound, and the sudden awareness of how much the wind had picked up outside, how hard the rain seemed to be drumming on the roof. The creaking got louder, now accompanied by the sound of a thousand ropes under extreme pressure. Tea's breath caught in her throat, and she began to back away slowly, her eyes wide, as with a tired sound of defeat, something fell on the front of the house, and the world went dark.

She screamed once, shock getting the better of her.

"What in the name of – oh geez." Bakura was suddenly beside her, staring into the darkness with an oddly apprehensive look on his face. He sighed, and then said in a dull monotone, "Oh, perfect."

"What – what happened?" Tea asked, finally getting a grip on herself and batting away the flutterings of hysteria. She was somehow surprised to find that she was shaking. Bakura did not appear to have heard her – he was staring down into the darkness with an unreadable expression on his face, as much of it as she could see in the darkness. Her eyes seemed to have adjusted a bit, but she was still practically blind for all intents and purposes.

Bakura rolled his shoulders and, completely ignoring her, began to walk cautiously down the stairs. His movements were surprisingly catlike, his body seeming now more lithe than skinny. Tea watched him in silence for a moment and then, impulsively deciding that it was better to be at least with someone, even if they didn't even acknowledge her presence, than to be on that dark landing alone.

She very nearly walked right into his back, and was only saved by the fact that she was carefully testing the air in front of her with both the hand that was not holding the banister and feet to stop herself falling headlong down the stairs in the dark. Not a fun prospect. As it was, her hand touched his shoulder before she took the step that would have made the two collide.

Bakura whipped around, but he only sighed and rolled his eyes when he saw who it was. "Are you still here?" he asked in a tone of complaint, staring at her in sudden irritation. "Oh, great. Just great."

"What? What's great?"

Bakura gave her a look, and said flatly, "A tree has fallen on my house, for which my annoying light will probably blame me, and because of it I'm stuck here for gods know how long with _you_!"

Tea's eyes widened in shock, and – choosing not to hear the second part – she gasped, staring into the darkness and shivering in the sudden wind running rampant through the house. "A tree fell on your house?!"

"It's there if you don't believe me. Great stupid hulking thing." Bakura snorted, shaking his head. "Ryou should have let me chop it up for firewood a long time ago."

"Trees are beautiful, and should not be 'chopped up'!" Tea said, suddenly offended, although not quite sure why exactly. "Anyway, it was the wind that blew it down. It wasn't the tree's fault."

Bakura stared at her in disbelief for a long moment. "You _actually_ – oh, never mind." He turned and started back up the stairs, muttering to himself in what Tea recognised from Yami as being Ancient Egyptian. Yugi's 'dark' half – a laughable way to describe him if Bakura also fitted into that category – also had a tendency to use it for swearing when necessary. Tea didn't approve of swearing, but she was at least grateful that he did so in a foreign language.

She thought about following him, but decided that it was probably not the best idea at this point – it would only irritate him further, and she'd seen him irritated. It wasn't exactly a pretty sight, to put it euphemistically. So, she walked cautiously through the darkness, arms outstretched before her; she had absolutely zero faith in Bakura coming down to help her if she fell and hurt herself, so she wasn't taking any chances. It seemed to be getting windier and windier as she moved through the front hall, and she figured that the tree must have created holed through which more wind could blow.

There it was. A massive branch, bigger than two of her waists, was lying in the middle of the lounge area. Her eyes trailed upwards, and an involuntary shiver passed through her as she made out the rest of the tree in the dim light from a faraway glimmer of lightning. She walked towards to, a stricken expression on her face as she took in the damage that had been done to the old tree, and almost managed to stand right beside it before a gust of wind hurled a hefty log into her stomach, sending her flying backwards to land in a heap on the floor. She clamped her hand over her mouth to stop herself from screaming, and warily prodded her stomach, wincing as her fingers found the newly-formed bruise. A bruise… but nothing seemed to be broken, thank goodness.

Slowly, she got to her feet, wincing every time her bruise twanged painfully. She could not stay down here, she knew, for the wind was picking up and at any minute a larger branch could hit her, coming out of nowhere like the first. As much as she disliked being in Bakura's presence, it was clear that upstairs was a hell of a lot safer than downstairs at this point.

At least Bakura didn't throw bits of tree at her.

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_There it is, folks. Don't forget to drop a review in the basket as you go out... -wink-_


	3. Chapter 2

_I think we can give up all hope of this ever being anything resembling a oneshot. xD Oh, well._

_Oh, and apologies for the shortness of the chapter... I just thought it ended better where I ended it than if I made it longer. andI'mkindofstilleditingthenextbit. v-v_

_Anyway... enjoy._

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**Disclaimer: FANfiction. I don't own YGO, the characters thereof, or even Ryou's door. -pouts-**

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_Oh, and is fanfictiondotnet probably going to do something to the formatting AGAIN. Ignore it and keep reading!_

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Tea walked cautiously up the staircase, clutching the banister fearfully. She'd never realised how scary the flight of steps she must have climbed a hundred times before could be in the dark, and it was with an inward sigh of relief that she came once again to the landing. There was a glow – not much light, but more than there was anywhere else in the house – coming from under a closed door she presumed was Bakura's, and cautiously she walked over to it, her footsteps almost inaudible on the plush carpet.

"Bakura?" she called quietly, knocking on the door, just once.

"Piss off!" came Bakura's strident reply, and then, even as she opened her mouth to retort with an angry question, he answered it. "Go to Ryou's room or something."

Tea grumbled under her breath, but she knew that there was no point in trying. She had tried: she'd tried for so long, to make Bakura like her. It had been neither easy nor fun, but she'd persevered. Maybe it was because she experienced unfamiliar feelings around him, feelings that she didn't like and wished to be rid of, actual hatred chief among them. She hadn't thought she was _capable_ of hate before Bakura. The young teen was very friendly and open, and she prided herself on the fact that she could make friends with _anyone_ – everyone, she **knew**, had a special spark in them, and hence she could relate to anyone. It was her gift.

But when it came to the many-thousand-years-old spirit, her gift failed her.

Gritting her teeth to hold back some of the more inventive swearwords she'd learned from years in Tristan and Joey's company – as much as she nudged them about their language, some things just never changed – she placed her hands, palm down, against the wall, and began to walk towards Ryou's room. The feel of the solid wall beneath her hands was reassuring, and in the darkness the feel of it sliding under her hands was the only thing that told her she was really moving. It was not long before the wall turned to the smooth wood of the door to Ryou's room, and after a brief search she located the handle.

It was locked. She could have cried in frustration. Locked! Why would Ryou _lock_ his door? The question had barely passed through her mind when the answer came to her, so obvious it seemed that no question was necessary – **Bakura** was the reason Ryou locked his door. She could only imagine the kind of mischief the white-haired youth would get up to in his light-half's bedroom if left to his own devices. Just the other week, Ryou had been complaining about having to buy locks for everything because Bakura had set the linen cupboard on fire. Honestly, what kind of mind did one need to go cheerfully about setting one's own house on fire?

Feeling her way back through the darkness, she rapped smartly on Bakura's door again, her features forming the unfamiliar expression – to her, anyway – of a glare. "Bakura!" she said, her commanding tone surprising even herself. "Open this door at once!"

The door wrenched open with startling speed, making her jump, and an angry face surrounded by a halo of white hair came into her line of view. "Which part," he growled at her, his voice dangerous, "of get-the-hell-away-from-me did you not understand?"

Trying to keep her voice neutral, feeling her teeth clench in dislike, Tea's words came out in a snappish tone that her friends would have been astonished to hear her use. "Ryou's door's locked!" She fought against the whine that was threatening to permeate her words, but somehow a little of it snuck through, adding its own lilt to the last word. Argh, damn him and his abominable manners! If it had been anyone else – anyone, even Seto Kaiba, who she didn't care for much either – they would have invited her in by now. What, was he _scared_? She'd been in boys rooms before. Most of her best friends were male, for crying out loud! It wasn't like she'd never seen mess before.

Bakura's ire turned slowly to thoughtfulness. "Right," he muttered finally, mostly to himself. "I forgot." His eyes flashed again, snapping up to meet her indignant gaze again, and he shrugged at her. "I fail to see how that's my problem." Her door-stopping skills came in useful once again, as she shoved her foot into the space between his door and the doorframe before he could slam it in her face, again. As much of his face, including a stormy-grey eye, as she could see through the crack, was murderous.

And then, quite unexpectedly, he opened the door, and slouched away. Tea stared for a moment, caught entirely off balance by this new development, and then hesitantly entered, bracing herself for what she might see within. She stepped onto the dark carpet, and looked around, her mouth all but dropping open at how… how _neat_ it all was! On the desk by the curtained-window, there were several books in a neat pile, a lamp and a strange-looking contraption of which she probably didn't want to know the use, considering whose it was, and the floor was clear except for a pile of clothes by the cupboard.

"What do you want, a guided tour?"

The familiar sarcasm brought her down to earth, and she turned to frown at him. "No need to be snippy, Bakura. I'm just stunned that someone like **you** could manage not to have a room that looks like –"

"Wheeler's room? Or Taylor's, that'd be something to see. Tell me, does he have much porn on his walls?" The white-haired youth was stretched out across his bed, hands behind his head and a malicious smile on his face as Tea coloured instinctively. "I thought so. Well, one thing that even _you_ should have realised by now, Gardener, is that I am not like those dim-witted fools." He shook his head at her and smirked, languorously stretching his leg out and flexing the foot at the end of it contemplatively for a moment. "I'm insulted you should even think to compare us."

Tea regained control of her mouth, her blush fading. "I know you're not like them," she snapped irritably, annoyed that her persistent desire to remain relatively clean-minded had worked against her now. He was playing with her, she knew, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Her mind simply _couldn't_ work in sharp zigzags as his seemed to, always ready with a caustic comeback and an insane idea. "**They** know what friendship means!"

"Aww, friendship." Bakura sat up, his eyes hardening at odds to his faux-saccharine-sweet tone. "Oh, cry me a river, Gardener. I do know what friendship is, and it certainly isn't membership to your cheerleading squad. Now go… sit in the corner and think of bunnies or something – whatever it takes to get you to be silent."

Offended, Tea stomped over to his desk chair and lowered herself into it. He seemed about to protest her choice of seating, but thought better of it and looked away, staring fixedly at the ceiling, very pointedly ignoring her. But she wasn't in the mood to be ignored. Bakura had said something that she found very interesting, and she wouldn't stop until she'd unravelled it to her satisfaction. "Well, then," she began, forcing herself to keep her tone semi-neutral, "what is friendship, according to you?"

_Dun dun dun, and all that jazz. ;_

_Anyway, do drop a review on your way out - I love 'em and coughhinthintcough they motivate me to actually work on this thing._


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